Democratic Candidates Urge Supporters to Push Voters to the Polls

A supporter of William C. Thompson Jr. took a picture in Brooklyn at a campaign rally.Credit
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

They hit the church circuit, fielded questions on street corners, and inhaled too many cups of coffee to count. They traveled to far-flung corners of New York City, promoted plans on education and affordable housing, and took pains in interviews to come across as down-to-earth.

On Sunday, two days before a hotly contested citywide primary, the theme of the day was turnout, and the candidates made sure to remind supporters that the real work would be to persuade their friends and neighbors to show up at the polls on Tuesday. Political analysts expect only a moderate showing, and many voters still appear undecided.

Wooing Two Key Groups

A flatbed truck blasting merengue and covered with “Christine Quinn for New York” signs rolled through the streets of Washington Heights on Sunday afternoon, trailed by a caravan of a dozen honking cars.

In between the musical numbers, the truck played recordings in Spanish and English from the Dominican merengue singer Milly Quezada, who called Ms. Quinn, the City Council speaker, “the one for us” or “la unica para nosotros.”

Some people on the sidewalk looked on in puzzlement, while others — vendors selling fruit, passengers waiting at a bus stop and women gathered outside the Mario Unisex Beauty Salon — waved or gave a thumbs-up.

The caravan highlighted Ms. Quinn’s targeting of two key groups in the final push of her campaign: Latinos and women.

On the Upper West Side earlier in the day, before a sign reading “Make History with Quinn,” a parade of prominent women, including the actress Lorraine Bracco and the country singer Chely Wright, tried to fire up a crowd of 100. Several speakers expressed frustration with the way that Ms. Quinn, a Democrat, had been depicted during the race.

“I know what it’s like to be called a pushy woman,” Julie Kushner, a regional director of the United Auto Workers, told the crowd. “But that’s what it took our union to get justice, and that’s what it’s going to take our city to get back on track.”

Ms. Quinn, when she took the stage, suggested that her recent setbacks were just part of a long history of women’s struggles to achieve power.

Photo

Christine C. Quinn, center left, targeted Latinos and women as she campaigned in Manhattan on Sunday.Credit
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

“Nobody — nobody — ever handed women anything in this town or anywhere else,” she said.

She asked all of the women at the rally to help get out the vote.

“When the polls close, we’re going to be in the runoff, and we’re going to win the runoff, and then girls will know the sky is the limit for them!” she shouted over the cheers, as “Eye of the Tiger” started blaring from the speakers.

That, essentially, was the message that William C. Thompson Jr. and his supporters conveyed on Sunday, as he crisscrossed the city delivering last-minute appeals to crucial voters in largely black and Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods.

Nowhere was that message more conspicuously on display than in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where Mr. Thompson, a Democrat, got rousing introductions during a rally to fire up Orthodox Jewish voters from former Sen. Alfonse R. D’Amato Jr., a Republican, and Assemblyman Dov Hikind, among others.

And though Mr. de Blasio’s name was not actually mentioned, there was little doubt that Mr. Thompson’s supporters were condemning Mr. de Blasio’s proposals to raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers to pay for more education programs, which would require Albany’s blessing.

“Some of the candidates with the promises they make have the business community — which is important, essential, to create jobs, to pay taxes — they have them scared stiff,” Mr. D’Amato said. “You’re making a promise that you can’t keep.”

Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, a City University of New York trustee who was a top aide to Mr. D’Amato, former Mayor Edward I. Koch and former Gov. George E. Pataki, went further, suggesting that Mr. de Blasio was engaging in “class warfare.”

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Mr. Thompson did not mince words either. “We have people who will make promises about things they have no control over, and they’ll promise it, just as long as they can get votes,” he said. “We’re not going to be able to move forward with false promises, with lying to the people of the city of New York about what can be done.”

The event was emblematic of a day in which Mr. Thompson, once again, presented himself as the mature, experienced steady hand who is the establishment candidate with appeal to Democrats and even some Republicans.

He spent much of the day delivering his stump speech at black churches, and was often accompanied by Representative Gregory Meeks. He was also joined, in Harlem, by Representatives Charles B. Rangel and — for the first time in this year’s campaign — Maxine Waters of California.

“I’m so impressed with his ability,” Ms. Waters said. “He’s had a lifetime of service.”

DAVID W. CHEN

Photo

Bill de Blasio at a campaign rally in front of Brooklyn Borough Hall on Sunday.Credit
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Getting Personal

Question: How can you tell a candidate is feeling confident? Answer: He gamely does a not-so-good Arnold Schwarzenegger impression in front of a crowd of people and a dozen cameras.

That candidate, Bill de Blasio, strolled the streets of Brooklyn on Sunday with a giddy optimism, bounding along with his wife by his side, as passers-by high-fived him and addressed him as “Mayor de Blasio.”

In a speech to several hundred people in front of Borough Hall in Brooklyn, Mr. de Blassio stressed the importance of robust voter turnout, and called on his supporters to remind everybody they knew to vote.

“You know in the action movies that line ‘Now it’s personal,’ ” he said, repeating the line, Schwarzenegger style. “We have to do that, but in a good way, not in a hackneyed way.”

If there was a reason for his excitement, it was a last-minute development brought about by the man he hopes to succeed, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. In an interview published on Saturday, Mr. Bloomberg accused Mr. de Blasio of exploiting race and class differences for political gain.

Wherever Mr. de Blasio went on Sunday, he tried to capitalize on the mayor’s comments, which appeared in New York magazine.

At a church in East New York, Brooklyn, the singer Harry Belafonte, who has endorsed Mr. de Blasio, said he was startled by Mr. Bloomberg’s suggestion that Mr. de Blasio had run a racist campaign by prominently featuring his wife, who is black, and his biracial children. Mr. Belafonte called Mr. de Blasio “blacker than a lot of black people.”

“I’m not quite sure what’s happened to that man,” Mr. Belafonte said of Mr. Bloomberg. “I knew that he was somewhat blind of spirit, but I didn’t know he was also blind of sight.”

Mr. de Blasio was more circumspect in his criticism of the mayor. He said only that he found the remarks “unfortunate” and “inappropriate.”

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has not endorsed a candidate in the race, weighed in, saying in an interview in Buffalo that Mr. Bloomberg’s comments were “out of line and have no place in our political discourse.”

“I think he should be very proud of his family,” Mr. Cuomo said of Mr. de Blasio. “If I were Bill, I would be campaigning with my family.”

JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ

A version of this article appears in print on September 9, 2013, on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Democratic Candidates Urge Supporters to Push Voters to the Polls. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe